How to Market Like Warren Buffett – Through the Eyes of An Investor

Let’s take a break for a minute from the flashy TV ads and the phone calls at dinner time asking us to change long distance plans.

Let’s put away and forget everything we know about marketing just for a second, just long enough to see it from another angle, because in a minute I want to show you how to look at marketing and investing that will change your life forever.

To start, how do we define the two terms: marketing and investing?  Well, investing is defined as “to commit something (usually money) in order to obtain a financial return.” But the word is based from the word investire in Latin, which means “to clothe, or to cover, gain control of something.”

So investing is all about gaining control over something in order to obtain a return correct?

Okay, now let’s examine what marketing means.  Marketing is defined as “the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.”

But why on earth would someone want to transfer their goods to a consumer?

To make money, to make a profit and to grow larger as a business that’s why.  At least, that’s how it is in a capitalistic society, which I am presupposing.

So, can you see how the two concepts are linked? Can you see how the very act of marketing is also investing?

Now, let’s take a page out of the book of the most famous and ridiculously rich investor, Warren Buffett.  You know him; he is the king of marketing.  He above everyone else, understands how investing and marketing are linked.

What’s important about his style of investing is that he doesn’t hold the charts, graphs, market capitalization, and the other technical business statistics with the same importance as does Wall Street. 

In fact, he snubs Wall Street by looking at the fundamentals of the marketing aspects of a business.  Let’s examine them; there are only 3 real big ones:

1)      He understands that you shouldn’t fight the market.  If people all of a sudden wanted Pogo Sticks instead of Coca-Cola, then he would look at that company.  He looks for winners and products that market must have.

2)      He understands that in order to protect a future investment, the product must have a high profit margin – in other words, it cannot have a lot (or any) competition. He calls this a “consumer monopoly.”  A product that can ride through the ups and downs of a roller coaster economy and still retain healthy margins.

3)      He understands consumables.  He wants to know that a consumer of that product will be buying that product again and again.  That is the secret, he understands, to protecting his investment.  A product that is a one time sale, will force the company to spend all their efforts on pursuing new customers.  An effort, that is not only extremely costly, but takes away from their ability to innovate.

He picks the companies with those 3 attributes and waits for the price to go low so he can get a great return on investment.

So what can we learn about Warren Buffet’s marketing approach to investing?  A lot.

If you are in business: Look at your own business and see if you can apply his 3 basic fundamentals to your business.  Come up with creative ways to increase your profit margin and test them out, before you commit.

If you are an investor: Look at the companies you want to buy or already have bought.  Will they provide you the return you want?  Does their business model contain any of those three fundamentals?  If not, perhaps they might be worth re-examining.

While Warren is unusual in that he made so much money, his principles are sound. 

If you are looking out for the long term then investing and marketing become clearly linked together.  Because with both of them, you expect an outcome that takes you further ahead compared to where you were yesterday.